FCC chairman voted to sell your browsing history – so we asked to see his

FCC chairman voted to sell your browsing history – so we asked to see his(zdnet.com)

25 points by elleferrer 9 years ago | 5 comments

jack9 9 years ago |

This is awfully misleading. One (the type of tracking referenced) has nothing to do with the other (actual web browsing history, which would spread across multiple machines), other than phrasing.

exabrial 9 years ago |

This entire topic is very sensational. I'm still under the opinion that protecting consumer privacy belongs to the Federal Trade Commission. For example, there's nothing stopping Amazon from providing a service about what you bought based on your IP address to advertisers. This clearly falls outside the realm of the FCC.

gumby 9 years ago | |

> I'm still under the opinion that protecting consumer privacy belongs to the Federal Trade Commission.

This is Pai's stated position as well.

I disagree with you both; I think the two commissions deal with different levels of abstraction and have different regulatory models (prospective licensure vs retrospective enforcement, for example).

However this is a topic on which reasonable people can disagree.

cjcampbell 9 years ago | |

While I agree that the article (and much of the coverage) is sensationalized, I don't agree that the description applies to the entire topic.

I can see reasonable arguments for supporting regulation under either FCC or FTC. The problem at the moment, as I understand it, is that neither agency has any authority over privacy and security practices of the ISPs.

moomin 9 years ago | |

Nah, the Internet is an essential service. (Don't believe me, don't use it for ten years and report back to me.) The provision also lacks meaningful competition in many areas, including this one. This is exactly where regulators get involved.